4 Essential Tips for Getting the Most Out of WordPress

With the fact that over 20% of all websites use WordPress, it’s no secret that it is the most popular content management system on the web. While the CMS does provide a bevy of amazing benefits, a lot of website owners that utilize it are unaware of the steps that need to be taken to have the best possible experience while using it.

To help you with this, let’s take a look at a few essential tips to help make sure you get the most out of WordPress.

1. Choose a Theme That Makes Sense Long Term

When you first start a blog, choosing a WordPress theme will be one of the first decisions you will have to make. It’s also one of the most important. For this reason, it’s a good idea to take some time to really research some of the different options out there and ensure that you’re choosing one that makes sense for you long term.

Develop an understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish with your blog, identify your target audience, and try to choose a theme that is most likely to resonate with that audience.

2. Utilize Plugins Effectively

Getting the most out of WordPress, in large part, comes down to choosing the right plugins. And with over 35,000 plugins and counting to choose from, there is no shortage of options.

The key here, however, is to find and install the ones that make the most sense for you and your blog. Installing too many can lead to security and site performance issues, which you certainly don’t want to have to deal with.

In general, it’s best to only install plugins if they’re necessary. If you aren’t utilizing certain plugins regularly, simply uninstall them.

3. Optimize Your Website for SEO

While most WordPress themes are designed to be as SEO-friendly as possible, that doesn’t mean that you can simply rely on this alone to rank at the top of search engines.

There are several plugins that can help with this, although you’ll also need to do things like properly indexing your site, naming your images, and using targeted keywords in your permalinks.

4. Secure Your Website

Due to the incredible popularity of WordPress, it has become an attractive target for hackers and cyber terrorists. And no matter how great the content management system and its plugins are, they’re benefits are worthless if you’re constantly dealing with security issues.